Stop The Stars From Shining
by Crystalazer
Summary: Clouds might cover the sky, but that doesn't stop the stars from shining. Tsunadecentric.
1. Prologue: The Flight

**Stop the Stars from Shining**

**Disclaimer: **Naruto does not belong to me. This little piece of personality given existance, does, however. So live it up. w00t.

--

Night falls on Konoha. The children are put to bed and the Chuunin begin their patrol at the borders of the village. Uchiha Ojimaru lounges on one of the watch towers, using a senbon to pick at his teeth. Damn, but this was easy. There had been a certain lull in the aftermath of the war that killed the Nidaime Hokage, who led the village for only two months after his older brother, the Shodaime Hokage, who, too, perished in battle. Konoha had won, and he could count the losses quite easily.

Sarutobi-sama, the next in line to become Hokage, had been inaugurated less than twelve hours ago, and the first command he had given was that guards would be posted at the village perimeters twenty-four-seven for any further attacks. As cautious and well-thought as this command was, Ojimaru had to admit that most of the sentries did not take their posts as seriously as they should have. He, himself, was thinking more about his wife, who was expecting and should be delivering a child any day now. Fancy that—him, a father.

It might have been fate that Uchiha Ojimaru was not completely paying attention and, instead, day-dreaming about his own family, for if he had peered closely through the leaves of the trees that grew in abundance below him, he would have seen two shadows fleeing swiftly away from the safe, if at least not peaceful, village.

--

"Stop following me!"

Two shadows fled through the thick forest; or, to be more precise, one shadow fled and the other pursued. The first leapt in a seemingly crazed pattern, trying to shake off the pursuer. Despite the passing darkness, the voice that spoke was undeniably female.

"Stop running away!" The second shadow yelled this in a gravelly tone that signified a relatively young male. To this, the female shadow did not reply, but only kept on her pattern of leaping farther and farther away.

"Stop being a coward!" The man tried again. "You couldn't have stopped them dying; any of them! What are you going to achieve by running away? It won't change anything!"

Abruptly, the fleeing stopped. Slowly, he felt her chakra patterns coming nearer and nearer. His growth spurt had come during his late teens, so her breath, hot and ragged, met only his chin. His inner-pervert (which, I digress, was the vast majority of him) was hoping for a kiss or something of the sort, but alas, the hope died out the moment his knees hit the tree branch.

The warning came too late. A fist came swinging into his stomach and twisted, sending him spiraling into a tree trunk twenty meters away. His knees buckled and his arms came out sprawling to prevent his face from hitting the bark. Standing up weakly with all of his extremities still shaking from the blow, he wiped the blood off his lower lip with the back of his hand.

Her chakra patterns were receding a lot faster than before.

_It can't be helped. _

Jiraya sighed. Tsunade of the Legendary Sannin had finally fled Konoha.

--

Hur. Hur. I took a little break from FFN to pursue the sad little thing I have called a life. I'm not quite sure about the timeline (when Tsunade actually left Konoha), so I just went with the time I thought would be the most accurate. If anyone can enlighten me, I'll be eternally grateful. This is, hopefully, going to be a chaptered story with around five to seven chapters...if possible. And they'll be longer too. Maybe. And now to go comment on the zillion stories I've missed while away.

**Love it? Hate it? I'll never know unless you _review!_**


	2. Chapter One: An Apprentice

**Stop the Stars From Shining: Chapter Two**

_-- _

_This is stupid. _An apathetic-feeling Tsunade nudged at a few pebbles on the riverbed, her arms folded across her knees and cradling the lower half of her face. Her large brown eyes watched the clear water moving in front of her, the stream just barely touching her toes. It had been four days and half of Konoha was probably out looking for her.

Her initial escape had been successful. But that, she realized the morning after, was as far as she planned. After his…passing, all she wanted to do was get away, far away, and never look back. And now she couldn't return. No, scratch that. She didn't _want _to return, to see all the faces she had known since childhood and see them smiling with him not among them. It just wasn't fair.

Well, one thing was for certain. Tsunade would never again use her medical arts to save another ninja. They had failed her, couldn't protect him, couldn't save his dream, couldn't save _him…_what was she? Who was she? What use was it to have this, this talent if you couldn't protect the ones you loved?

Angrily, she splashed the water with her feet, disturbing the calm, steady flow trickling past. The ex-jounin stared hard at her reflection, distorted by the ripples of the water disappearing as the stream shaped itself back into its original shape.

_The stream always keeps moving… _she thought to herself, _it doesn't matter if something's blocking its way. I wish people could be like that. I wish **I** could be like that._

Tsunade felt a sob climb up in the back of her throat and swallowed it back down. It was useless to cry; her tears would only add to the stream anyway. She would just…she would just have to learn to live without him.

Sighing, she stood up, flipped one blonde ponytail over her shoulder, and stalked off towards town. The sound of Pachinko balls were always calming.

--

"Tsunade-sama!"

Said Sannin froze, frigid, afraid that someone from Konoha had found her, or, even worse, the owner of one of the gambling houses she had scammed.

But no…the voice was too young.

But voices could be deceiving.

_Turn around or run? _She argued with herself.

_You'll never know who it is unless you turn around!_

_But what if it's someone I don't want to see? _

_Then you'll know, won't you?_

_But if it's a person I don't want to see and I escape, they won't get me!_

_But what if it's someone you **want **to see?_

_Then—_

"Tsunade-sama!"

"What!" A little more than annoyed with the voice interrupting her thoughts, she whirled around to face the person who had called her name.

A young, dark-haired girl beamed up at her. In her slightly pudgy arms, she clutched a more-than-slightly pudgy piglet.

Tsunade recognized that face. She had only seen the girl once, but she had seen the features in the face all-too often.

"Shizune…"

"Hi, Tsunade-sama!" Shizune smiled and squeezed the piglet, a little too hard, it seemed, as it suddenly squealed in protest.

"Oh, Ton-ton," The little girl giggled and let the piglet jump from her arms to the ground, where it ran around the girl with its nose to the ground.

"What are you doing here?" asked Tsunade, feeling weak in the knees with relief.

"Oh, I don't know." She said cheerily. "I think I was visiting some relatives but our carriage got taken by bandits. They let me go, though, as long as I didn't tell anybody about them."

Tsunade must have looked horrified because she added quickly, "But it's okay, because I don't even like Great Uncle Hiwa."

The Sannin sighed. "Which town were you headed to?"

"I don't know." Shizune shrugged. "Where Great Uncle Hiwa lives, I suppose."

"And your father in Konoha?" pursued Tsunade, knowing that talking about Shizune's mother, _Dan's sister, _was a touchy subject.

"He probably won't miss me." The girl replied happily.

The Sannin sighed.

_I swore I would never return to Konoha. A lost little girl can't make me turn back now._

Well, there wasn't much to do about it.

"Fine," said Tsunade finally. "You can come with me."

"I can?" Shizune's face lit up like a light bulb. "Wow; thanks, Tsunade-sama!"

"Yeah, yeah…now just come on."

If they ever found her, she'd probably be accused of kidnapping the girl, but whatever.

--

It took Tsunade exactly twenty minutes at the Pachinko Parlor to realize that it was useless to let Shizune tag along unless she could do something useful.

"Tsunade-sama—you lost again! See? The little balls are going away and you aren't getting any more!" Shizune pointed happily at the cache. Tsunade grunted.

"Are you going to keep playing, Tsunade-sama? Huh? Huh? What are you going to do if you run out of money? Are we going to starve? What'll Ton-ton eat? Will we sleep in the streets like the people I saw in books? Are we going to have to wear those icky rags and—"

"Shizune!" Tsunade's eyes flashed as Shizune looked up at her innocently. The irritated Sannin forced herself to lower her voice as the other patrons of the parlor poked their heads around curiously. "Shizune," she hissed between clenched teeth, "After this game, I'm going to teach you to do something useful, okay? Just…just be quiet for a while!"

"Okay," whispered the little girl, "I'll be quiet; I'll be so quiet that you won't even be able to hear me at all—"

"_Shut up_!"

"You're not being very quiet, Tsunade-sama."

--

Eh...heh...heh...I kinda forgot about this for a while, but I decided to go through my old "Prose in the Process" folder and this popped up. So I decided to write another chapter; hopefully, I'll remember to write the third one. I also noticed that I made Shizune annoyingly innocent. My reasoning is that once she undergoes extensive training with Tsunade, she'll mature a lot more.

P.S. Angst is my forté. I couldn't help it. Shoot me, please.

_Love it? Hate it? I'll never know unless you **review!**_


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